Instead of other posts I may have promised in weeks past, I bring you another video featuring yours truly. In this one, VOA’s Brian Padden profiles myself and Faiz Shakir of Think Progress and the way we see things as political bloggers from opposite sides of the aisle:

Funny that it contrasts my >200 daily views with Think Progress’ <200K views; cut from my interview is the next part where I mention getting 20K views one day the previous week. Although I am not saying Padden should regret choosing me as an interview subject, comparing my when-I-have-time politech blog with the Center for American Progress' propaganda pipe organ is hardly an even match.

I'd also have to say I'm a little weary of repeating the now well-established line about the left's advantage online; it's not that it isn't still true, but that it isn't interesting. I’ve used Blog P.I. to follow some of the ways Republicans have closed the gap over the past couple years, and once I have the time to resume blogging in something like a consistent manner, I’ll work harder to make that point more constructively.

FriendFeed is one of the more recent Web 2.0 services on the scene, and some believe it could be the latest next big thing.
Considering the McCain campaign’s sometimes uneven online strategy, this is a step in the right direction. It’s better to send your campaign out into the places where people are than to expect them to come to you, anyway. So, I subscribed in return:

And it’s the campaign, all right — the favorited video indeed shows up on the official McCain YouTube channel as the most recently favorited video.

Better still, the favorited video was uploaded by McCain Girls, the parodic creation of left-leaning humor website 23/6. Sure, the joke may be on McCain, but the McCain campaign is willing to laugh along with the joke. The video favorited is of McCain literally laughing along with it.

Obama, of course, is on FriendFeed as well. He also has more online content piped through it: Digg, Flickr, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube. McCain’s camp only lists the official blog’s RSS feed and YouTube account.

I know that’s not all they’re doing. McCain is on LinkedIn; earlier this month the campaign made clever use of the surprisingly resilient socnet, asking a question of the site’s memebers and receiving more than 3,000 responses.

I’m a bit surprised that McCain’s camp appears not to be using Flickr. Surely someone is taking pictures; during the Fred Thompson campaign we kept the Flickr account updated constantly with photographs taken by Thompson family friend Jim Rydell. (We released all photos under a Creative Commons license, thus providing quality photos of Thompson that supporters could use.)

McCain doesn’t appear to be using Twitter at either likely account (here or here), though supporters are giving the campaign a presence (here and here) on the increasingly zeitgeisty socnet.
McCain’s camp did create an account on Digg, but they haven’t used the account since late last year.

Maybe all of this is not crucial, but the more social networks a campaign uses, the likelier it is they will reach people they would not have otherwise. Democrats will do all they can to portray McCain as old and out of touch, so presenting him well him to the young and with-it denizens of these online communities should take on added importance. Meanwhile, fundraising seems to be improving a bit, so maybe Pat Hynes will get a few extra hands to take care of these things.

• First and most importantly, Blog P.I. would like to thank our advertisers. In related news, Blog P.I. has advertisers! Yes, the Blogads box at right has lain barren since I first signed up over a year ago. But now there are three — one from the left, one from the right, and one that I created to promote a friend’s website. Your support is greatly valued, even as I remain officially neutral on the merits of your particular issue and/or cause.
• I yield to no critic in my undying devotion to HBO’s “The Wire,” but I must concur with Slate’s TV Club that this fifth and final season is off to a rocky start. The newsroom stuff is too didactic, some of the older characters are speechifying a bit, and the pacing seems weird. I know, it’s a tall order to wrap up a series of this scope in ten episodes while introducing yet another new plot strand. If this was any other TV show, I wouldn’t be complaining. But about that newsroom — does anyone else think the show’s explicit “dead where it doesn’t count” message is somewhat undercut by the ongoing investigation into the death of four girls in Southeast DC? Unlike some fictional deaths depicted this season, these real ones made the front page of the Washington Post again and again, making national (even international) news upon first discovery. I’m not discounting the trend — but current events at least prove it’s not fait accompli.
• In a recent post, I pointed out that LinkedIn offered no option to turn off the acquaintance-recommending feature that automatically alerts you to people you may want to be networked with. As it so happened for my colleague, one such recommendation was an ex-girlfriend, whom he most certainly did not want to network with. Well, I still think LinkedIn should offer the option to disable (or enable) this feature, but he informs me that it is no longer appearing on his account. So, uh, Blog P.I. gets results?
• Here’s something totally useless, but as an admirer of Douglas Hofstader, amuses me greatly: What’s the TinyURL for TinyURL.com? Well, if you plug the URL into its self-same website, it turns out to be:

       http://tinyurl.com/u

  So what’s the TinyURL for that?

       http://tinyurl.com/7uw

  And that?

       http://tinyurl.com/8ee

  I could go on, but I’ll spare you. The website remembers every TinyURL generated for each page previously entered, so I assume that http://tinyurl.com was in fact the 21st URL entered into the website. Nice to know others are just as interested in the concept of reflexivity. (Hat tip: NM3.)

• Today is a day I’ve been counting down to for nearly a year, even though I didn’t always know it: Fred Thompson needs a big showing in South Carolina’s primary this evening, and via Captain Ed, it looks like he just might get it. It’s been a great last few weeks for the campaign, maybe even the best few weeks of the campaign so far. Here’s hoping it’s not, in fact, the last few weeks of the campaign. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

I guess that’s all for the moment. Regular blogging about matters of politics and technology to resume shortly.

• Hotline On Call
• The Corner
• Memeorandum
• Ground Game
• BlogNetNews/Iowa
• Google Maps
• William Beutler on Twitter
• IowaCaucus on Twitter
• Drudge Siren alerts, via Gmail
• Several Gchat windows, also via Gmail

Feel free to recommend something in the comments; I’ll add anything that I end up following.

For the record, I’m hoping for a strong third-place finish for Fred Thompson, and a Huckabee win to keep Romney from getting one. For the Democrats, I’m hoping for a persuasive Obama (not Edwards) victory to keep things interesting. One thing I am definitely rooting against: respectable wins by Romney and Hillary; that is to say, I’m rooting against Iowa.

8:58 update: It’s not even 9:00 Eastern and Fox News is calling it for Huckabee, with Thompson third: 36-23-14. Haha, only if she’s 5'3".

9:28 update: Half an hour later, MSNBC calls Iowa for Obama first, Fox follows close behind. Things will get more interesting.

9:32 update: The Google Maps Iowa caucus page still says:

Come back tonight for live results!

9:45 update: You know, the Dem results came back a lot faster than expected. So much for Edwards’ momentum, though it seems to be playing as a Hillary loss. Meanwhile, Jim Geraghty guessed correctly this morning in a piece that should get a second look.

10:28 update: Back and forth between the non-concession speeches [updated: and in 2OT, victory speeches] on CNN and the down-to-the-wire Blazer game on TNT. For once I need picture-in-picture. [Final update: "115-109, THE HOTTEST TEAM IN THE NBA GOES TO 20 AND 13!"]

11:58 update: Looks like Chris Dodd already had his throwing-in-the-towel banner ready to go:

Whereas it appears that Joe Biden did not:

No great surprise, Mike Gravel’s website hasn’t been throwing rocks into the lake since December 31. [Update: Gravel is still in the race, eh? That'll teach me to believe what Keith Olbermann says.]

12:37 update: Not to pile on Dodd, who wasn’t the only sub-1% Democrat tonight, but the best headline of the night belongs to Eric Pfeiffer:

Chris Dodd .08!

12:52 update: While the most unlikely reportage is Isaac Chotiner’s:

TNR friend Charles Barkley writes to say that Obama winning Iowa is a “great start” and he hopes it leads to Obama “winning it all.” And who wants to argue with Sir Charles?

1:01 update: Calling it a night.

No, wait. One last update: If you’ll allow me to indulge, via Twitter:

If Romney loses Iowa after having spent $1.8 billion there and then loses in his backyard in New Hampshire he’ll be in bad, bad shape. The horrid press over the following few weeks would likely kill him.

(ed.note: I had meant the reference to Mitt’s $1.8 billion in spending in Iowa to be an obvious bit of sarcasm at Romney’s expense. But it seems Romney’s efforts to buy the Republican nomination have become so notorious and proverbial that many readers are asking if it’s really true. So, no, I believe his spending is well below $1.8 billion. But he wants it really bad and there’s still a day left. So who knows.)

$1.8 billion sounds plausible? Using what counting system?

Elsewhere on the web today, a Des Moines-based WFAA reporter says Romney has spent $4 million on TV ads; also today, Fred Thompson [disclosure] aide Rich Galen writes in a column for CNS news,

according to the Professional Guessing Class, [Romney] may have spent upwards of $8 MILLION here

If Romney has in fact spent $8 million, which doesn’t sound like a bad guess, then he would have to spend 225 times that in order to spend $1.8 billion. CNN says all the candidates combined have spent $40 million on TV ads; I’d be surprised if there was a billion dollars worth of TV time to be had in Iowa in an entire year.

If Romney really dropped that much money in the state, Iowa could practically retire, and hey, maybe accede to another state or system its coveted first-in-the-nation status. Which would probably be a good thing for everyone. Except, of course, Iowa.

P.S. For example, see this from First Read:

MOUNT PLEASANT, Iowa — A woman who famously switched from volunteering for Clinton to Obama has changed her mind… again. …

“Probably I’ll caucus for Richardson,” she said after Edwards spoke. “My guess is he won’t be viable, and then I’ll probably scoot right over to Edwards.”

Are Iowans really so serious about their vote? Or are they spoiled and self-indulgent? In another state, I’ll bet voters would not feel so entitled, political observers would not ascribe such mythical status to their choices, and just maybe, subsequent states would have a bigger say in the primary process.

Alas, as my former Hotline colleague Reid Wilson explains, attempts at reform might be about as easy to properly implement as the Fair Tax.

P.S. After some consideration, I actually wish I had called this “Josh Marshall’s Readers Are… Not So Good With Numbers.”

Online fundraising startups are a longstanding interest of Blog P.I. In our year and a half, we’ve devoted more than a few posts to the subject, including the progressive, Democrat-supporting ActBlue, the conservative, Republican-aligned newcomer ABC PAC/Rightroots, attendant security issues and flawed coverage often (but not exclusively) in the Washington Post. The last time I wrote about it, Rightroots had relaunched, and two similar Republican fundraising startups — Big Red Tent and Slatecard — were announced and on the way shortly.

Now, all three have been up for more than a month, which I think is enough time to make an early comparative assessment.

For those playing at home: Rightroots is a reboot of the ABC PAC/Rightroots slate that saw a trial run fairly late in the 2006 cycle, controlled by McCain adviser Becki Donatelli, former Giuliani Patrick Ruffini and Mike Turk, an outside adviser to the Thompson campaign. Big Red Tent is an outside-the-beltway venture by a pair of Austin, Texas web consultants Ryan Gravatt and Brad Jackson. Slatecard is the brainchild primarily of ubiquitous DC Internet guy David All and web developer Sendhil Panchadsaram (who strangely has no website that I can find).

Last weekend, I signed up for each one and made some nominal contributions. Since then, I’ve continued poking and prodding. I thought about putting together an elaborate chart comparing their features side-by-side. Perhaps in a future post I will, but for now, but I don’t think that gives as clear a picture of what I thought about them. Instead, this post collects my observations, with screen captures. It’s a long one, so I’ve tucked the rest of this post below the fold. Follow me…

I should preface all of this with a caveat: These observations are simply what I found when I visited over the past week. It’s possible there are oversights in my summary, and if there are I will update this post. In true Mystery Shopper style, I didn’t discuss my testing process with any of those involved, so this should not be taken as a fully reported piece. There are probably good explanations for many of the problems I encountered, and if they are given, I will gladly link to them in an update.

Choosing a candidate to receive my small donations was not difficult: I am not only providing outside counsel to the Fred Thompson campaign through my employer, New Media Strategies, but I am also a FDT supporter. Thompson’s consistent federalist philosophy being a large component of my enthusiasm about his candidacy, where I could, I termed my group or slate “The Frederalist Society.”

With that out of the way, here are my thoughts on each in turn, followed by a conclusion. As always, YMMV.

RIGHTROOTS

Because Rightroots is the oldest, arguably best-known and first to go live (again) this summer, that’s where I started:

• The website is very simple, and not difficult to navigate. From the main page, one can click through to “Candidates & Races” or perform a search, enter the amount of money you want to donate and proceed to its Amazon.com-style checkout.
• Rightroots includes a link to the candidates’ homepage, which is nice, but that’s about it for any information about the candidates. One pretty much has to know who they are supporting before they get there.
• Using Rightroots, I donated $5 to Friends of Fred Thompson. This went fairly smoothly, up to the point where I had to enter a credit card. The confirmation number on the back of my card has just three digits, while the form demanded exactly four. So I put a zero in front of the digits, and that did the trick. It would have been nice if it would recognize the different security systems for each of the major cards.
• The front page of Rightroots also lists “hot slates” (groupings of candidates) but it doesn’t list figures for how much each have raised. These slates were evidently compiled by Rightroots itself, and so does not answer one of my main criticisms from last year — that it does not allow for users to compile and promote their own slates. I was told this feature would be included next time, but for whatever reason, it didn’t happen. Consequently, this was also the one site where I was unable to set up my “Frederalist Society” slate.
• Now, the selections for some of these slates make good sense — “100% No Earmarks” is described on that page as:
  

  Honoring House Republicans with a perfect 100% voting record against pork barrel earmarks in the 110th Congress, as recently scored by the Club for Growth.

  Nice. On the other hand, one slate merely collects all of the Republican presidential contenders — well, except for Alan Keyes; I doubt that bothers you. But I also doubt very many people want to donate to all of the White House candidates.

• There is a “Donate All” button for each slate, but it’s hidden at the bottom, underneath the last candidate’s picture — it is not flush with the other, similarly-designed donation buttons.
• More nitpicks — Rightroots’ poll, promoted on the front page, is out of service. Try voting, and you get this:
  

  An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.

  The good news is, the error message goes on to detail instructions for fixing the error. I don’t do code, but if I could get terminal access, even I could probably take care of that. Also, there is no button to view the results without voting.

• Along the same lines, I also got this certificate warning at one point:


• But I really dig the link to the FEC query for Rightroots’ own reports. The others should follow this example.
• I gotta give Rightroots this: It is back. The website languished after the November ‘06 midterms, which I complained about in January, drawing strong objections from some of those involved. I wasn’t sure that it would actually return, but it certainly has done that.
• Unfortunately, the follow-through seems to be half-hearted. Nothing has been added to the News section since August, and it’s been just over a month since anything was added to the blog (there are 5 posts total). It’s not clear to me why there are separate sections for “News” and “Blog.” This reminds me of typical campaign websites, which have had a press release section since the dawn of online politicking, then added blogs separately when they became the norm. Why not put everything in one place?
• RightRoots is simple, but it’s too simple. The site lacks any compelling reason to use it. (Really, not even a widget?) There is nothing that makes the site sticky, or compels you to come back.

BIG RED TENT

Next, the one I know the least about:

• My relative ignorance about Big Red Tent probably has something to do with the fact that its creators are based in Austin while the others are inside the Beltway. On the Internet, physical location is of much less of a consideration, but it still hasn’t received much coverage. It does have the official backing of RedState. But I haven’t seen them write about it since it first went up.
• This site is quite a bit different than the other two, starting with the sea of white compared to the others’ dark backgrounds. I like that. I like the logo, too — it’s the best of the three, I think. Moreover, it also has the best name, communicating its intent to build one large, happy GOP family.
• Otherwise the site is a chore to navigate. Why does Big Red Tent not have a “Sign up here” button on the front page? Why can’t I click on the logo to return to the homepage? Rightroots and Slatecard offer both.
• When you go to sign up and give money, the form asks for your blog URL (sure, why not) as well as my IM screen name (hmm) and cell phone number (really?). There are not required, but it would be nice to know why they were asking. This reminds me of the website Radiohead built to sell their latest album, “In Rainbows.” Am I opting into future text messages? I know people who just elected to grab it off BitTorrent instead. I don’t think that quite works for Big Red Tent.
• The reliance on Drupal means I was assigned a convoluted password, rather than being able to choose my own. Maybe I should write down every single password for every single site where I’ve created accounts, but I don’t. So this bugs me.
• Big Red Tent is not free of bugs, either: I kept getting this when I was logged in:
  

  “The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.”

  Hitting “reload” did take care of the issue, but it happened a couple more times thereafter.

• Alone among the three, Big Red Tent has a Twitter account. Great! Unfortunately, it hasn’t been updated in approaching two months:
  
  

  In that case, it’s fortunate that it isn’t featured on the main page (where it probably should be), where it would signal to all that there isn’t much activity here.

• Big Red Tent offers a widget that I didn’t test, but looks attractive enough to place in my sidebar. However, it seems to be fairly wide, and I doubt it would fit in everyone’s sidebar. (But I certainly approve of the fact that the example widget shows Thompson at the top.)
• Is Big Red Tent trying to do too much? Take for example BRT TV — a promised series of video interviews, hosted by Gravatt and Jackson’s Patriot Group colleague Jill Warren, that has no third video (really second, as the first is an introduction). Again, the lack of follow-through isn’t promising.
• More questions: Why does signup page still ask if I want to be notified when they launch? Seems to me like they’ve already launched. Why can I click into Groups at the top of the page, but not individual Slates? Isn’t “Group” just another word for category from the blog? Where is the blog? The Field Report is helpful, but I could use more of it. I also can’t find the Stump Speeches feature now, so I can’t link to it.
• Stump Speeches, Slates, Groups, Files, Contact lists, Guestbooks, Inboxes... help! I’m utterly lost. The confusing array of features reminds me of the late, unmourned HotSoup and its “issue loops.”
• At least you can create your own slate. As Gravatt explained to Matt Lewis in a Town Hall interview this summer:
  

  We were faced with a decision: Who will the PAC support? We only liked two options. Option 1 is for Brad and I to decide, and Option 2 is to let others decide. We decided Option 2 would be best for a PAC with an online community.

  That’s right on, although it doesn’t seem that there is much of a community so far. That said, at least it offers the possibility, which Rightroots does not.

• I concluded my experiment with Big Red Tent feeling both overwhelmed and underwhelmed. It’s great that there are several functions, but it seems there are several too many. Ultimately, I felt like maybe there was something going on that I just didn’t get.

SLATECARD

And the newest kid on the block:

• Slatecard had both the longest incubation period and was the last to launch. This owes something to principal David All’s penchant for self-promotion, which may bug others (including some at Rightroots) but probably serves Slatecard well.
• At Slatecard, the minimum donation is $10, unlike the others, where I was able to give just $5. Credit card processing fees do take a big bite out of proceeds, so I understand this, and there are probably very few who can afford to give no more than $9.99. On the upside, Slatecard alone lets you check a box to make your donation recurring monthly, if you’d like.
• On the downside, unlike the other websites, my phone number was required. I would kind of like to know why.
• Otherwise I had no problems signing up or making a donation. If there are bugs in the site, I didn’t encounter them. It was the smoothest experience I had at any of the three.
• On the other hand, why isn’t there a search function on the website? The other two do offer this capability.
• The front page of Slatecard shows you who’s “hot” — individual candidates and user-created slates — and includes dollar figures. That’s cool. The non-disclosure from the other sites I believe is a holdover from traditional campaigns, where if you’re not sucking up the dollars (and therefore sucking), you don’t want that public. All puts his cards on the table, and I respect that.
• Speaking of which, All has led an e-mail drive to raise $75,000 overall in the first month since going live. He didn’t quite make it, but it was very close — and within days, the $75,000 goal was met.
• Slatecard offers widgets, of course, and they are the best-designed of the bunch. In fact, if you’re on a Leopardized Mac, All has even explained how you can put one in your Dashboard. (Note: This is a Leopard feature; one could do this with Big Red Tent’s widget as well.)
• True to All’s love of all things social networking, candidate pages link to each candidate’s official pages on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and the like. Each is represented by the socnet’s logo, but you have to mouseover to know that they go anywhere. Slatecard links to candidate official sites as well, but it’s just a clip art image of a house — I got it the second time, but it would make a lot more sense if I could just see the URL as on Rightroots.
• Because Slatecard has the best pages for individual candidates, it paradoxically left me wanting even more. For one thing, the biographical summaries are clearly copied from older versions of each candidate’s Wikipedia page. I can tell because I know Wikipedia style, but it doesn’t identify the source.
• And these pages would be improved if you could add comments. Slatecard gives the impression of offering greater interactivity than the others, when in fact Big Red Tent so far allows for the most feedback.
• Perhaps the most unique aspect of the site is the ability to add “issue badges” to candidates you support. As much as I’d like to sneer, “we don’t need no stinkin’ badges,” I dig this:
  
  

  Naturally, I added the “Federalism” badge to Thompson’s page. It makes sense that you can only add a badge if you have donated to a particular candidate. However, I was only able to add one badge, and the site doesn’t say how many added the same badge as I did. It would also be nice if you could organize by badges and call up a list of all the candidates whom users think they describe. And would it be too difficult to let users create and upload their own?

• This feature also includes idiosyncracies that are all All — one of the issue badges is for “Supports Net Neutrality,” a pet issue of All’s, and something only Mike Huckabee does. As Ruffini has noted separately, it’s essentially a lefty issue. Sure, you can add the “Opposes Net Neutrality” badge… but why is “Support” represented by Pac Man and “Oppose” is represented by Blinky (the red ghost villain)? An annoying editorial tic.



• Perhaps a more serious issue — the badge for “Defeat Radical Islam” puts the Universal No symbol over the Star and Crescent. The war against radical Islam is not, the last time I checked, a war against all Muslims. But that’s what the badge implies.
• Most promisingly, the frequently updated blog announces milestones and upgrades, and has done so consistently since Slatecard launched.

All of these sites are good enough — that is, they do what they advertise. It’s just a baseline, though these websites are still in their infancies (maybe some are toddlers). After tinkering around with each, Slatecard emerges the winner in my book so far. It’s by no means perfect, but it seems more thought-out than its rivals. It offers some unique features that are still fairly intuitive, and it appears to be the most active. While there hasn’t been much activity on either Rightroots or Big Red Tent since their respective launches, I presume both parties imagined the sites would be self-perpetuating and requiring minimal upkeep. At least Rightroots doesn’t promise much more than it delivers; Big Red Tent was more ambitious but almost feels abandoned.

Most of my judgments above are fairly subjective, so I did try to include one objective (if imperfect) metric — how often each site is linked to by third-party websites. Since BlogPulse advertises this capability (unlike IceRocket) I fed the URLs for each into their Trend Tool, selected feedback for the last three months, controlled for possible alternatives (ABCPAC.com and BigRedTent.com both redirect to their respective main sites), and here’s what I found:

Rightroots has had the highest highs, Slatecard is buzzier now, but thanks to an apparent spike in attention last month, Rightroots is hanging in there. I presume that All’s frequent promotion for his project is propping up his numbers a bit. Big Red Tent was in the mix when it launched, but never received as much attention and has since dropped off significantly. (Note: I also fed the names of each site into BlogPulse; the Trend Tool returned more spikes for each, but the pattern was the same.)

Although there are many differences between the sites, they are not so far apart that, given an update or two, Rightroots or Big Red Tent couldn’t usurp Slatecard as the go-to site. But perhaps the most important thing about Slatecard is that, like ActBlue but unlike its Republican counterparts, it has already made the transition to being the primary fundraising mechanism of a political candidate. That’s VA-01 hopeful Kevin O’Neill. So far he’s raised nearly $65,000 — so All should definitely be thanking him for helping reach that $75,000 goal. Of course, candidate support is just what a site like this needs to gain credibility in Republican campaigns, and it’s no secret that brick-and-mortar GOP consultants are warier of using the web than their Democratic counterparts.

I salute each one of these websites, and their creators, for doing what they are doing. I hope they all continue to upgrade, borrow features from each other and compete for online GOP fundraising supremacy. And there’s no reason why there needs to be just one; perhaps they can all find a niche. I hope they do.

Disclosure: As previously noted, I’m with Fred, but that merely influenced the direction of my extraordinarily modest contributions. Otherwise, I do know some of those involved. I consider David All a friend, Patrick Ruffini a friendly acquaintance, and while I have not met Mike Turk in person, we do sometimes work together behind the scenes in the Thompson camp. None of them knew I was writing this post, and I doubt that any of them will be entirely happy with it.

On Thursday I gave a somewhat-impulsive thumbs-up to RedState’s call for CNN to sack their political director. National Review’s indispensible Jim Geraghty has outlined eight editorial oversights (four quite serious, four merely problematic) in CNN’s vetting of the televised questioners. One or two would be enough to generate a blogswarm, but eight looks like malicious negligence, and it subseqently became a full-fledged blogstorm. Worse, CNN’s statement didn’t even attempt to be a “non-apology apology” — they’re digging in their heels and claiming:

The issues raised during last night’s debate were legitimate and relevant no matter who was asking the questions. The vested interests who are challenging the credibility of the questioners are trying to distract voters from the substantive issues they care most about.

Did somebody say “fake but accurate”? As QandO’s McQ notes, the hubris implicit in that statement is galling:

Says who? Says CNN, that’s who. It is the network that chose the questions that would be aired. Consequently what aired had nothing to do with what voters found to be the substantive issues of the day, but instead had everything to do with — say it with me — what CNN decided were the substantive issues of the day.

I stand by my initial judgement — in fact, I am all the more sure of it — but I realize it isn’t going to happen. (FWIW, CNN’s political director is Sam Feist; one wonders if indie rock/iPod Nano darling Feist could do any worse). And the truth is it wouldn’t make up for the debacle, so I concede that a change is not imperative. What would be better is a pro-active solution — that is, another debate. And so I am very intrigued by a new proposal, this time issued jointly by RedState and Human Events (both subsidiaries of Eagle Pubishing), for a “do-over debate”:

We have a base of readers who represent the Republican wing of the Republican Party. You — and the Republican Party — deserve to face the questions posed by undecided Republicans, not Democratic activists. We will solicit and obtain YouTube videos from those people and vet each questioner to establish that they are — really — undecided Republicans. We hope to include soldiers in the field in Iraq, Young Republicans, and others who still have not decided among you.

Today, allow us to make you this offer: We will organize a debate at a time and date amenable to you all. We will work with a national broadcaster to broadcast the debate as well as offer it online. We, not the liberal drive by media, will ensure the questioners are who they say they are. And we will choose them based on criteria that will be fully disclosed to you all which ensure the questioners aren’t activists for any Democratic candidate.

I think this is a terrific idea. The MSM no longer has a monopoly on campaign coverage, so why should they have a monopoly over organizing candidate debates? The only good answer is because they control the airwaves. Could Fox News be persuaded to air it? Possibly. C-SPAN would certainly set up a camera, it could be simulcast on the web, and it would obviously be made available on YouTube. Heck, put it on the History Channel. I bet more people would watch it.

And if so desired, Google/YouTube (GooTube, if you will) need not formally be involved. Eagle’s online outlets could independently create a YouTube account, put RedState’s Erick Erickson and Human Events’ Jed Babbin in a short video soliciting questions, and anyone could post their videos as responses. Eagle could narrow them down, submit them to a hand-picked group of conservative bloggers to identify the best, and blog readers would be invited to vet the questions themselves. The ultimate decisions should still be made by the organizing consortium, but the crowdsourcing would be a substantial (if not bulletproof) way to head off complaints from conservatives. Necessarily, this would aso give the campaigns time to study the questions and prepare well-thought out answers — this too would be different from the “gotcha” element that annoyed so many in the CNN/YouTube debate.

Of course, the last point hints at the major reason why it wouldn’t happen. Here I’ll note: I cannot formally join the call for such a debate; as I point out whenever relevant, New Media Strategies consults for the Fred Thompson campaign, and I won’t put the campaign or my employer on the spot. Same goes for the other campaigns, though — the Iowa caucuses are now a month away and no campaign should be pressured to join a debate in a time frame this limited. The CNN/YouTube debate required months, not to mention a “Save the Debate” movement by Republican bloggers, to happen at all. So don’t hold your breath, and save your Facebook campaigns. But it’s a terrific idea.

To address another issue: A few commenters on the above-mentioned post here, including some friends of Blog P.I., apparently read my criticism of the debate as a complaint about tough questions. If I understand them correctly, they feared a not-yet-proposed alternative would result in “softball” questions. I replied that they were mistaken, and pointed to a prediction by Patterico following the Democratic CNN/YouTube debate in July:

The Democrat debate was dominated by questioners asking: “Why can’t you be more leftist?” And the Republican debate will be dominated by questioners asking: “Why can’t you be more leftist?”

That pretty much nailed it. The problem is not that the issues CNN is so pleased with itself for raising were illegitimate or unfair. They were not. It’s that those Dem-leaning questions asked by Dem-leaning YouTubers were general election questions, and the general election audience generally (as it were) was not watching. Certainly Republicans should keep an eye toward next November, but a debate for a Republican primary should focus on issues that matter to Republicans. Say what you will, but “don’t ask, don’t tell” just isn’t one of them, and it doesn’t help Republican voters make up their minds. It does no good when Google flies a publicly-identifiable Hillary Clinton supporter in to berate the candidates about their position on the issue. (One which, I would like to point out, is unlikely to be a major factor in the general, either.) In fact, it rises to the level of farce when Anderson Cooper asks said Hillary supporter to rule on whether or not the candidates answered his question and the guy says “no,” yet anyone who was paying attention knows they did answer his question honestly, but he just didn’t like their answers.

True, CNN did air questions about illegal immigration, gun rights and religion. But RedState/Human Events would query those subjects, too. They might even include a question about the Bible that doesn’t conform to slack-jawed yokel stereotypes (sorry, Joseph Dearing, whomever you are, but when you assert that your question tells us “everything we need to know” about the GOP hopefuls, that’s how you come across). Although various writers at RedState and Human Events have evinced support for various candidates (Erickson most notably in favor of Fred Thompson, I can’t help but note), I would argue they have a greater interest than CNN in a strong, fair debate that includes difficult questions for all the candidates, because (as Erickson and Babbin point out) it’s their audience who will be deciding which Republican goes on to the general election.

In short, RedState and Human Events would be better curators of a Republican debate than CNN.

Because I am confident that this do-over debate will not come to pass, I encourage both to organize similar debates for Senate and House candidates, whose primaries mostly will not be decided until further into next year. This would give them time to work out the kinks, gain experience appealing to local television channels for airtime, and give them credibility in proposing such a debate in 2012 (er, 2011, but you know what I mean). I call on Pajamas Media, NRO, Heritage or any other independent, webbish, GOP-leaning organization to do the same. Now that I think about it, I call on Josh Marshall’s TPM empire to do the same for Democrats.

You know what would be awesome next fall, sometime after the conventions and before the general election, Commission on Presidential Debates-permitting? A RedState/Daily Kos YouTube debate.

I promised then to look a little closer at the identity of this dedicated anti-Fredhead, and while I later thought I had thought the better of it, Christopher Caldwell’s piece in the most recent New York Times Magazine afforded me the opportunity to re-rethink that decision.

And so this post exists… in three interminable parts. I don’t often use the below-the-fold feature on WordPress, but this post won’t appeal to everyone, and I don’t want it to get in everyone’s way. But if you’re game, then follow me…

I. Lucky Jim

Let’s start at the beginning. The post mentioned above dared The Artist Sometimes Known as Jim Robinson to post on this site, and to his credit (I suppose) he did:

Jim Robinson
Jul 11th, 2007 at 2:14 pm

Y’all (thats “you all” dumbed down for FRaudheads) flatter me. I guess if Fred actually had credentials you wouldnt be sitting here worrying about what Im posting on blogs.

DOH!
Posted Jul 11, 2:14 PM

I went on vacation a few days later, and apparently “Jim” missed the flattery enough to come back and beg for some more:

RepublicanWomenAgainstFredThompson
Jul 20th, 2007 at 3:55 pm

I thought y’all were gonna do something about me???? What happened? ROFLAMO! losers.

Taunted into submission, eventually I decided to go ahead and see where his IP address was located:

The IP address traces to Bell, California, a nothing city located in Los Angeles County. According to Wikipedia, its most famous native is bandleader Stan Kenton, and was last heard from in 2000, when USPS misplaced some Oscar statuettes and this was inaccurately reported as a stolen shipment. For what it’s worth, this IP address is the same one supplied to me by another blogger hit with similar absurdities from our friend “Jim.”

Next I tried contacting the person at the Yahoo address listed for multiple handles, s1nderella@yahoo.com. I was even going to offer an e-mail interview, if he or she was so willing. Alas, it bounced back immediately.

So I Googled s1nderella, which seems to be a named used by a handful of young female social networkers. I suppose this could lend credence to the idea our “Jim Robinson” is actually a woman in drag. Or maybe not. Perhaps our political prankster is just a little more planned-ahead than usual, and is reasonably sure the IP address will not connect him to his or her job, nor any candidate.

And that’s just as well. It’s not as if these attacks are having any impact besides annoying the Fredheads (I’m sure some will read the very existence of this post as evidence that Fred supporters are “afraid” of such attacks, but I’ll just point again to the title and mission statement of this blog). Meanwhile, “Jim” had struck again (and probably again and again), even getting called out at Sean Hackbarth’s site, where a contributor linked back to my original post.

II. Basil the Great

So “Jim Robinson” continues to hide in plain sight. But what is his agenda, if he has one beyond making a scene? Let’s now look at his actual words. Here’s one of the more peculiar (not to mention widely-distributed) phrases from his oeurve:

One right-wing critic in a widely circulated internet column called Thompson a “neocon globalist” for his immigration, free trade, and foreign policy positions.

I joked at the time that the source must have been left unidentified because he was so obscure as to induce, at best, confusion. Seems I was more right than I knew. The “right-wing critic” appears to be someone named Basil Harrington, who sometimes describes himself as “a retired businessman, poet, and resident of Chapel Hill, North Carolina” and sometimes merely as “a scholar, writer and gentleman.”

Mr. Harrington appears to be nobody of any repute, and if he wrote anything prior to March of this year, it’s not easy to find. He is considered a self-promoting crackpot at Free Republic, a website that knows from self-promoting crackpots. In fact, it appears that Mr. Harrington’s limited output as an essayist has been posted to just about any website accepting unpaid conservative commentary: at Liberty Post, Men’s News Daily, Enter Stage Right, ChronWatch, SmallGovTimes (which claims Bill Frist, Dick Morris and others as contributors (i.e. it has copied their words from the Senate floor and The Hill)), and NewsBull to list a few. He is “widely-circulated” all right — apparently all by himself.

NewsBull is (at least one) home to the rant that inspired “Jim Robinson.” It begins:

Fred Thompson: Neocon Globalist

By Basil Harrington

For the past few days movement “conservatives” and GOP cheerleaders have been ecstatic that Fred Thompson, former Senator from Tennessee, may form an exploratory committee to seek the GOP nomination for president. “Now we’ll have a conservative in there,” said one person, who, I assume, has no idea what a real conservative is.

There already are two fine conservative candidates seeking the nomination: Ron Paul and Tom Tancredo. And Fred Thompson does not even come close measuring up to them.

Fred Thompson is a neocon globalist.

It’s also funny, and possibly telling, that in this brief article Harrington uses the same “one person said” trick often employed by “Jim.” More than once, actually:

As one commentator notes: “Overall, Americans for Better Immigration gives [Thompson] a career grade of C…”

As a rhetorical strategy it subtracts the need to name sources, but it also subtracts credibility. I hesitate to suggest that Basil Harrington doesn’t exist — that he could simply be another invention of “Jim Robinson” — but I suppose I just did. They certainly both have a habit of posting their writings to as many websites as possible, and “Robinson” sure does like to quote “Harrington.”

I have sent Mr. Harrington an e-mail, which at least hasn’t bounced back. But even if he does reply, what would that prove? (Although to be fair, I’m not sure what it would disprove, either.)

III. Keeping Up With The Joneses

The epithet “neocon globalist,” as wielded by “Jim Robinson,” is often accompanied by a mention that Fred is a member of that venerable magnet for conspiracy nuts, the Council on Foreign Relations. Sometimes “Jim” (and possibly other anti-Fredheads) shortens this to “CFRed,” which I must concede is at least sort of clever.

But really, who cares about the CFR? Who actually thinks this book club for the political elite is some kind of, ahem, global conspiracy? Well, just plug CFR, neocon and globalist into Google and it doesn’t take long before you’ll find Infowars, the conspiracy site run by fringe online radio host Alex Jones.

It may be worth pointing out — and I swear, I’ve avoided using this name for as long as I could — that Ron Paul is now a repeat guest on Jones’ online radio show. And while the last time on he didn’t actually say that the U.S. government orchestrated the 9/11 attacks (a favorite theory of Jones’) he certainly did court the support of that theory’s most high-profile proponents. This connection between simultaneous support for Ron Paul, fear of globalism, hatred of neocons, and interest in the so-called 9/11 Truth movement, among other conspiracies (ice hockey and Alanis Morrisette (there’s that Canadian thing again…)) can be found on this YouTube account, and this one and this one. And this one.

So at long last, let’s go back to Caldwell’s fascinating piece for the NYT. Caldwell does not mention Alex Jones and he doesn’t invoke the hoary threat of “neocon globalism,” but he does invoke another name which is better known to conservatives: John Birch.

Paul never deals in disavowals or renunciations or distancings, as other politicians do. In his office one afternoon in June, I asked about his connections to the John Birch Society. “Oh, my goodness, the John Birch Society!” he said in mock horror. “Is that bad? I have a lot of friends in the John Birch Society. They’re generally well educated, and they understand the Constitution. I don’t know how many positions they would have that I don’t agree with. Because they’re real strict constitutionalists, they don’t like the war, they’re hard-money people. . . . ”

Paul’s ideological easygoingness is like a black hole that attracts the whole universe of individuals and groups who don’t recognize themselves in the politics they see on TV. To hang around with his impressively large crowd of supporters before and after the CNN debate in Manchester, N.H., in June, was to be showered with privately printed newsletters full of exclamation points and capital letters, scribbled-down U.R.L.’s for Web sites about the Free State Project, which aims to turn New Hampshire into a libertarian enclave, and copies of the cult DVD “America: Freedom to Fascism.”

But the truth is, and here I hope the Ronulans will give me a break (even if I did just call them Ronulans), these people are not all supporters of Ron Paul. They stand along the fringe with him, and include many who are not Republican Party members. Some of them can be found in the Constitution Party, one example being “Unfit for Command” co-author Jerome Corsi, who reportedly

also wonders when people will realize that Thompson, who is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is a globalist who would push for open borders.

Corsi is also known for promoting the theory that President Bush is pushing for a single North American state much like the one imagined in David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest” (albeit with fewer Quebecois wheelchair assassins, one presumes.) As PostPolitical puts it,

Of course, why these absolutists suspect they’ll get a better society from the empowerment of the advocates of open borders, atheism and bureaucratic statism, is anyone’s guess. … This one has been sneaking up on us for awhile. It’s increasingly difficult to distinguish the rhetoric of Pat Buchanan, Michael Badnarik, Lou Dobbs and Ron Paul from each other, as representing different schools of political philosophy. That’s a very recent phenomenon and it bodes ill for the GOP.

So, this much we know about their leanings:

• They don’t like Fred Thompson
• They don’t appear to like many Republican politicians
• Only Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo (and sometimes Duncan Hunter) pass muster
• They conflate globalization with immigration
• They make little distinction between legal and illegal immigration
• They fear the Council on Foreign Relations
• They hate “neocons”
• Some of them think the U.S. government may be behind 9/11

This fear of a unified world government is like nothing so much as the conspiracy-minded views of the old John Birch Society, a group evicted from the GOP by one William F. Buckley Jr. nearly 50 years ago. Though the Birchers oppose government-backed wealth redistribution, they also (in its current, withered form) oppose government-backed free trade agreements. And they are, to put it mildly, weird people.

Like the Birchers, who at least managed to correctly identify international communism as an existential threat, Ron Paul is not wrong to maintain healthy fear of government encroachment on individual liberty. But one need not be a Bircher to fear communism, and one need not be a Truther to distrust the government.

Unfortunately for Ron Paul, he has cast his lot with them, and with that, has cast himself out of today’s mainstream Republican Party.

P.S. It should be said, our Basil is not this Basil (as far as I know).

It’s one thing to offer relevant criticisms of a candidate (or potential candidate), but making things up out of whole cloth is an obvious sign of desperation. From what I’ve seen, some people are desperately afraid of no one so much as Fred. Which people? Savvy readers will be able to guess for themselves, but I’ll save my comments on that for later.

This post tracks the activities of one (I assume it’s just one) shape-shifting anti-Fredhead and the ridiculous lengths to which he (I assume it’s a he) has gone in recent weeks to attack Fred in many a comment section across the left- and rightosphere. Let’s dig in:

I can’t remember where I first noticed somebody named “Jim Robinson” going after Fred, but thanks to the Oracle of Mountain View, it was not difficult to track his hilariously ineffective mau-mauing across the blogosphere. Early on, he sounded like a Rudy fan:

This guy is a joke and delussional if he thinks people qill vote for him because they like Arthur Branch. He has absolutely no executive experience and is less qualified for the job than Barack Huessein Obama.

Posted by: Jim Robinson | May 31, 2007 at 12:26 PM

This comment is a rarity not just for its expression of support for Giuliani, but also because it was posted at Gina Cobb’s website and hers only (the typos, as we shall see, were not a rarity). This next comment, on the other hand, found its way to at least three dozen comment sections, sometimes as Jim Robinson and sometimes as Thompson Truth File:

During his eight years in the Senate, Thompson won his free trade credentials with his votes to extend the president’s fast-track trade promotion authority and to approve permanent trading relations with China. One right-wing critic in a widely circulated internet column called Thompson a “neocon globalist” for his immigration, free trade, and foreign policy positions. Social conservatives are also likely to question Thompson’s “liberal” voting record on immigration. Although Thompson has recently written and spoken out about the need for strong border control, while in the Senate he voted to increase visas for skilled foreign workers and to increase permits for unskilled foreign farm workers. Overall, Americans for Better Immigration, an anti-immigration lobbying group, gives Thompson a career grade of C for his mixed voting record. Thompson will likely come under withering criticism from anti-immigrant candidate Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), who mixes his social conservatism with a heavy dose of nationalism and anti-corporate populism.

Posted by Thompson Truth File | June 11, 2007 4:26 PM

I particularly enjoy the bit about “one right-wing critic.” One assumes that the critic being quoted is either a figment of the author’s imagination or someone so fringey and insignifcant their name would provoke, at best, a quizzical look. Here our Mr. Robinson sounds more like a supporter of Rep. Tancredo — quite a leap for a recent Rudy-booster. Also weird is the detached, matter-of-fact nature of these statements, as if these are not the writer’s opinions, but perhaps you might be interested to know… know what? Fred is not an “anti-corporate populist”? Gee, that’s helpful.

Another comment, both too long and too slanderous to repeat here, was posted to a couple dozen different comment sections during the month of June — on conservative blogs such as Frank J’s IMAO and Steven Taylor’s PoliBlog, liberal blogs like Crooks and Liars and The Hollywood Liberal, even mainstream newspapers like the Denver Post and gossip site TMZ.com.

It may be a clue that “Jim Robinson” is almost surely stolen from Jim Robinson, the owner and operator of Free Republic. If you’re wondering, here’s what the real Jim Robinson thinks of Fred:

Unlike RudyMcRomney, Thompson/Hunter are not the media’s choice. Nor are they the Republican leadership’s choice. They’re the grassroots conservatives’ choice! Great concept, eh? … now that we have fine conservatives like Thompson, Hunter, Tancredo, et al, making solid progress … I’m starting to get optimistic about our chances.

Now, here’s “our” Jim at Michael van der Galien’s site, upon the news that Fred was (at the time) planning a trip to Israel:

Fred Thompson is going to Isreal to campaign for the US PResidency but cant be bothered with getting on the campaign trail and meeting actual US citizens. Thats rich. Sound like a globalist.

Oh Fred, you globalist, you! And see this from Wizbang Blue:

Thompson is a puppet of Karl Rove who is pushing an amnesty bill on a public that clearly doesnt want it. Why doesnt someone ask Thompson about his ties to Rove ans whether or not he supports theamnesty bill. So far Fred refuses to answer any questions and later this month he will be traveling to Isreal and London to campaign for the United States Presidency. Something very shady is going on and the people have a right to know who exactly Fred Thompson is.

Posted by Jim Robinson | June 12, 2007 4:27 PM

What’s that? Fred, a supporter of the misbegotten “comprehensive” immigration bill? Now, that’s worse than wrong — that’s outright dishonest. Fred has been speaking out against the bill in radio and web commentaries and at speeches in Virginia and Connecticut — listen to Fred in his own words.

Meanwhile, our pseudonymous critic actually stepped up this line of attack. Shedding “Jim Robinson” and adopting “FredsForAmnesty” — this may be my favorite handle — he decided to invent a quote and push it as far across the blogosphere as possible. See this comment, deposited on at least two dozen blogs in late June, here from The Jawa Report:

“We can not deport 12 million illegal aliens.” Fred Thompson

Posted by: FredsForAmnesty at June 20, 2007 05:45 PM

It’s easy to isolate because he spelled “cannot” as “can not.” Many people have said this, but Fred Thompson has not been among them.

Even more hilariously, this individual set up an account just to plant this made-up quote at lefty netroots homebase MyDD. Even better, a MyDD contributor actually told him where to go — indicating that this line of argument works on neither conservatives nor liberals. It’s almost too much.

And we haven’t even gotten to the other ridiculous nom-de-blog mentioned in the title, “RepublicansAgainstFred.” This moniker has been used at least three dozen times, on some of the most prominent blogs on the right. At Wizbang proper:

He is nothing more than a puppet of Roves and if he manages to fool the GOP primary voters into giving him the nomination, the GOP will get creamed in the general.

If Fred Thompson wins the nomination, I will immediately go out and register as an independent. I can not in good conscience vote for a completly inept and dishonest candidate. There is too much at stake.

Posted by RepublicansAgainstFred | June 19, 2007 1:49 PM

At Captain’s Quarters:

I dont care who endorses Freddie or comes out against him. I will never vote for Freddie. not in the primary and not in the general. He is a politcal HACK!

Posted by: RepublicansAgainstFred at July 2, 2007 12:41 PM

My favorite among these coincided with Fred’s recent trip to London, which included a meeting with Lady Thatcher and a speech before a private (not public, like the schools) center-right think tank. Here’s what he posted to California Yankee:

Who the hell does this guy think he is going to London and making statements about foreign policy? Last time I checked he was only a private citizen and he cleary has no authority to do so. He is out of line. WAY out of line.

Posted by: RepublicansAgainstFred | Tuesday, June 19, 2007 at 05:53 PM

Okay, now that’s just funny. And before I forget — RepublicanWomenAgainstFred? Definitely the same guy.

Anyway, I think I’ve made my point — some falsehood-spreading moron with way too much time on his hands has launched a comment-section crusade against Fred Thompson. If bloggers who have received his comments are interested in forwarding his IP address to me, I will gladly look into it further. It doesn’t really matter, though — the good news is that it doesn’t seem to be having any effect whatsoever. The bad news, such as it is, will be discussed in my next post.

In the meantime, feel free to suggest any additional instances of this laughable conspiracy of one in the comments.

William Beutler:

New Media Strategies, my employer and the folks who pay the bills around here, has been contracted to advise on Internet outreach for Fred Thompson’s nascent presidential campaign. I’ll be working under Howard Mortman (aka Blog P.I.’s Higgins) alongside Jon Henke (he’d be our Face Man, if Blog P.I. was named for The A-Team; see his concurrent announcement at QandO) and others from the crack Public Affairs staff here in scenic Rosslyn, Virginia. As everybody knows by now, Fred’s campaign is putting an emphasis on using new online tools in innovative ways, and we’re honored to take part in the effort.

I generally keep my own politics off Blog P.I., but I’ll make an exception here: Thompson will have my vote, even though I live in the District, where the Republican party might as well not even have a presidential primary. For what it’s worth, I’d describe my politics as right-libertarian; I’m a pragmatist with a preference for limited-government solutions. And as Cato@Liberty wrote of Fred last week, “On federalism, there may be no better candidate.”” Not to mention his strong record of fiscal conservatism, something the GOP could stand to stand for again. He’s also been realistic about Iraq, that we are left with no “good options,” the war was a good one but done badly, and leaving it to the Qaedists is the worst option. He’s a solid conservative and a “happy warrior” with more ideas than he’s given credit for (so far) and is already running a whole new kind of campaign. If you’re at all inclined to cast a Republican ballot, Fred Thompson is definitely the best choice.

Regular readers (I assume you exist) will notice that I have mentioned Thompson a few times over the past few weeks. For most of that period, I knew it was a possibility that we’d be working for the campaign — though we certainly weren’t being paid. Even so, I only mentioned him where the analysis would suffer for his absence. And for what it’s worth, I did write about him (favorably) before this even started.

What does this mean for Blog P.I.? The site will remain “an ongoing series of investigations into, studies about, and commentaries on uses of the Internet in U.S. politics” where “the writers have their ideological blindspots like anyone else” but “aim for observation and reason, not assumption and opinion.” You may start noticing more overtly positive comments about Fred Thompson, but they’ll stay rooted in analysis — and I’ll post a disclaimer whenever his name comes up.

Not Paul Begala:

My choice for president and the only candidate that I want to work for is Barack Obama.

It comes down to a simple formulation championed by his main opponent: change vs. more of the same. This country is in desperate need of change.

I am not one of those Dems that says Hillary Clinton cannot win the presidency. If she is the general election nominee in fact, I’ll guarantee she will win. There is no more strategic and ruthless political family in the country and 2004 showed that the mechanics of campaigning can win elections regardless of issues and facts. As a serial campaigner, I can admire that.

But I don’t want to win on a technicality. I want change, I want a movement, I want a governing philosophy and a majority that implements it. Obama’s mantra — that individual achievement is amplified when done through collective action is the antithesis to the “every man for himself” mantra of conservatism in the past 20 years.

I want a nominee who will not only battle for people’s votes, but their hearts, minds and souls.

Olly Ruff:

I am not an employee of New Media Strategies, and I don’t aspire to work for the Obama campaign. In fact, as a non-resident alien, I don’t think I’m supposed to do things like endorse candidates for President. So, in what is either a principled ethical stand or simply a craven attempt to preserve my visa status, I pledge to carefully maintain my neutrality and objectivity throughout, and to eschew the cheap partisanship of my colleagues as I advocate for what I hope will become the moderate consensus position.